


Helpless

by nesrynfaliq



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, Slow Burn, Smut, it's got all sorts, post acomaf
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-05
Packaged: 2018-08-12 11:27:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7932895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nesrynfaliq/pseuds/nesrynfaliq
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set post ACOMAF. Cassian and Nesta first time scenario. The two work out the secrets that have been poisoning their souls for some time now and surrender themselves entirely to one another.</p>
<p>Teaser: He’s...Different. Unlike anyone else she’s ever met. Hard and soft all at once; a gentle warrior; a compassionate killer; a kind battle commander; a good man.</p>
<p>And somehow; some faint but insistent feeling deep in her gut whispers that he’s hers. Her counter and balance. Her match, able to handle her without ever conquering her. Her equal – one who can and will always give as good as he gets. Her destruction or her salvation, the one who has the potential to be either or somehow both at once. When most of the men around her had struggled her entire life to be anything to her at all... This man; Cassian; was everything. And she had no idea how to respond to that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In The Eye Of A Reckoning

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this piece for quite a long time, I hope it manages to live up to expectations!

 

Rage. Anger. Fury.

There’s a fire that burns inside her. Burns and burns and burns. In that miserable, frozen hovel they had struggled to carve out an existence in it had been her salvation. Feyre had had her stubborn defiance and the oath she had made their mother. Elain had had her gentle, unassuming hope which had been the greatest strength and light any of them had shown in that darkness.

But she had only had that bitter anger to fuel her and keep her going. Now the thing that had given her life all those years is killing her. It’s ceased fuelling her and has instead begun feeding on her. It's devouring her a little more and a little more every day, destroying her from the inside.

Pain and guilt and grief join the torrent of anger and her soul becomes a hurricane beneath her paper thin skin. Terror flares as it rages inside her and she realises she can’t control it. Magic begins to well inside her, the sting of it now sickeningly familiar. Everything amplifies, getting bigger and stronger and louder until it numbs and deafens and blinds her to everything that isn’t her and this twisted power.

She fights it. She clenches her fists and clamps down upon it. She tries to force it to submit to her. She tries to wrestle it into submission. She tries to force it to yield to her.

 She fights. It wins.

The scream – of agony, of anguish – bursts from her as the pulse of magic erupts. Nesta crumples to her knees as her room explodes around her. It wrecks her in the process. She is left more shattered than the smashed windows and splintered furniture. The destroyer of the destroyed. The powerful powerless. The unbreakable broken. The Made unmade. The invincible immortal ruined by her own hands.

****

Cassian yawns expansively, giving his wings a habitual shake to try and rouse him. The still tattered edges sting at the sudden, jolting motion and he grits his teeth, biting back the hiss of pain. They were better than they had been. In that regard he hadn’t lied to his brothers but...Rhys and Azriel knew anyway. They knew that he pretended to be better than he was. They knew some small part of him still feared, even after all these centuries, not being important, not being useful, not being needed.

So he insisted he was all right, ready to return to his duties, to prepare them for war. And his brothers accepted this, even when they knew he lied. Azriel’s eyes he felt on him in particular. Watching, his brother was always watching, watching everything. But when his hazel eyes watched him they were riddled with pain and guilt.

At night he’s felt his brother’s quiet, anguished presence there with him. When he wakes sweating and screaming, his wings ripped from his back again, he feels Azriel's guilt there too. That only made him more determined to keep going, to be fine though he was far from it.

Weeks ago he had told Nesta he would have given up those wings a hundred times over to save his brother’s life. That hadn’t changed. It never would. Nesta had believed him; had understood that sacrifice. Azriel never would.

His brother burned with guilt for his loss – a loss he knew Az understood; pain he knew Az saw. They knew each other too well for him to truly hide anything. But for now Az knew he needed them to pretend they believed him, pretend everything was all right and so he did.

Cassian sighs heavily, rolling his shoulders to work the tension from them. That unbearable, near continual restlessness that has plagued him since Hybern builds in him once again. Ordinarily he would have flown to chase away these feelings. He would have launched himself into the sky until the cool night air swept away every issue and concern. What he wouldn't give to lose himself once more in the wind’s tender, comforting embrace.

But...but there was no point pining after what he couldn’t have. They all had too much to concern themselves with now war was brewing to worry about what they didn’t have. The healers told him to have hope; that he may fly again. In a way that vague promise was worse than none at all.

 He wanted to know what he was dealing with. He wanted to be able to see the field before him. He could work with the soldiers he had, train them, shape them, inspire them, command them. He could deal with resources he knew he didn’t have; find ways to work himself around their lack. Things he  _might_ have frustrated him. Those he could do nothing with. They weren’t real and so couldn’t be used. But they might be and so they could not be dismissed either.

Growling darkly to himself Cassian drags a hand through his shaggy hair. Then he squares his shoulders and forces himself to continue on down the corridor. Marshalling himself he tries to go back over the points discussed at the meeting he had just left, seeking to distract himself. He has little success. 

A scream catches his attention instead, obliterating everything else around him. Chaos erupts following the shriek; as though a hurricane is tearing through part of the house. Causing his Siphons to burn like flames Cassian draws on his power. He lets it thunder through his blood, flooding his system, reading him for the fight. Then he sprints towards the source of destruction while servants hurry away. They part to let him pass, knowing better than to stand between him and whatever dares to try and harm those he loves.

As he draws nearer he realises that the source of the disturbance is Nesta’s room. His power flares more sharply in him, longing to devour any who would hurt her, his High Lord’s ward, his High Lady’s sister, his...

The snarl of fury rips from him as he bursts through her door. The action sends it flying off its already damaged hinges. As he balances himself he reaches for the sword at his back, taking up a position to both attack and defend.

He had promised to protect her. He failed her in Hybern. He had sworn a second, silent oath to himself never to do so again.

Scanning the room for any threats he keeps his practiced eyes sharp, even through his blind fury that any would dare threaten them here. However Cassian realises within a few heartbeats that they’re completely  alone in her room.

Understanding floods him the moment he finds her hunched on the floor in front of him. She's cowering –  _cowering_  – head hung, body slumped in the midst of the wreckage that surrounds him. Both the eye of the hurricane and its most devastated victim.

Despite her newly enhanced Fae form and all its accompanying strengths she seems so small huddled before him. In the mortal world, as a human, she had stood before him with the confidence, bearing and command of a queen. Now, as a Fae....That Cauldron hadn’t Made her; exactly the opposite.

Releasing his power and allowing the build up to dissipate, leaving only the usual faint rumbling behind, he steps into the room. He goes to her, steps deliberately heavy so he doesn’t startle her by approaching her from behind. Once he’s close enough to her small, hunched form he reaches out and places a gentle hand on her shoulder, trying to offer her some comfort and solace.

It’s thrown off with a violent strength a heart beat later. “Don’t touch me!” she spits viciously at him.

Her whole body trembles uncontrollably like a wild animal that’s been wounded and corned. Somehow he can sense the terror and pain rippling from her in waves, like the aftershocks of a boulder hurled into a pool far too small to contain it.

Cassian takes a step back, his hands raised in a gesture of surrender even though she’s shrunk in on herself again, back to him, and can’t see. Resigned, he decides to leave her in peace. Giving her a chance calm down should help. He'll return and see if she’ll let him help her once she’s had a chance to compose herself and doesn’t feel as ragged and raw and vulnerable.

Then he notices the trickle of blood that weeps from her shoulder in soft crimson tears. He freezes mid-step then changes his mind. Padding into the adjoining washroom he gathers together water, bandages and a bottle of ointment to tend to the gash. It needs to be bound up until her depleted strength returns enough for her to heal it herself.

Returning to the bedroom he crouches down in front of her. She refuses to acknowledge his presence but he sets down the things he’d collected from the bathing room anyway. 

“You’re bleeding,” he tells her in a low growl, gesturing to her torn shoulder.

His warm hazel eyes seek out the cold, battered blue-grey steel of hers. She avoids him still, sparing a cursory glance to her shoulder instead. Shrugging, she hunches further away from him, dismissive. “It’s fine,” she mutters back to him, a flicker of characteristic snap edging her words but no more.

“It’s not,” he says words blunt but still gentle. They soften further when he adds, “Let me take a look.”

Her eyes meet his this time. Drawn to him by the same irresistible instinct that kept him here even after she’d snarled at him to leave, wanting to make sure she was all right. Whatever she sees in his gaze, in him, seems to thaw the armour of ice that always entombs her. After a long moment she jerks her head at him, permitting him to approach and tend to her.

With careful, if callused fingers, Cassian eases the strap of her dress down her arm, baring the wound to him. Leaning in close he can feel her ragged breaths hot on his cheek for a moment. Then she turns her head away from him, staring out of the now empty window to avoid him. He probes cautiously at the long, deep rents in her skin, trying to assess the extent of the damage.

Nesta jolts round to face him with a sharp hiss when his thumb grazes over one of the raw edges accidentally. He flicks his eyes up to check on her but she’s already looked away again, as though afraid of looking at him. Or else of being truly seen by him.

“Sorry,” he growls quietly to her. 

That makes her turn to face him again. For the brief moment that their eyes meet Cassian feels something stir in him. Something that ties him to her. It's there, if only for that single pounding heartbeat. And gone again the moment she tears her gaze from his.

Pulling himself together Cassian irritably brushes off the flash of feeling. Then he uses the ointment to clean the cuts, murmuring soft apologies to her when she grimaces in pain. Then he bandages them, trying to avoid touching her bare skin with his as much as possible. Every time he does so a spark seems to jump between like, like lightning flaring from her to him. He knows that she can feel it too, though she tries to pretend otherwise. Neither of them mentions it.

As he works Cassian fixes his gaze on her, trying to assess her condition. His hands remain gentle but a trace of steel lines his next words. “You need to learn how to control this,” he tells her flatly, keeping eye contact with her the whole time. 

He feels her body stiffen beneath his touch in response to those words. Softening slightly he caresses her arm with his hand he slides it slowly down until it meets hers. Then he takes it between his fingers and squeezes gently, trying to take some of the sting out of the admonishment. “You’re going to hurt someone,” he murmurs, trying to make his intentions clearer. “You’re going to hurt  _yourself_. And it could be much more than a scratch next time.”

*****

The snarl erupts from her throat before she can stop it.

“I don’t want to control it,” she spits at him.

She had tried to force her voice to be hard and firm but it came out brittle and near childish. And she hates it. She hates that it’s coming out now, hates that it’s in front of him, hates that he’s here to witness this, hates it all.  

It only ends up stoking the fire of her fury. She clamps down on it, choking it off, even though it smothers her in the process. If she erupts again...If she injures Cassian this time...

She had thought it had emptied her. The outburst. She thought it had drained her, she had been so exhausted when it had exploded out of her. But it always comes creeping back in the moment she think it's gone. That twisted power seeping into her, filling her up again, consuming her again. There’s no respite. There’s no end to it. There's no way to stop it. There's no way to control it. And she can't, she can't-

But she’ll control it this time. She  _has_ to control it this time, she can’t bear the thought of anyone being hurt by this. He must have known, must have somehow seen in her eyes, from the way he looks at her now. She won’t let that happen. She takes several deep, shuddering breaths, trying to master herself. As she does she realises dimly that she feels more in control around him...Somehow.

Strange, she thinks to herself. When she’d been human, he had been the only one to make her lose that control, the one who had looked at her and  _seen_  her. He had stripped everything from her until she was simply the woman that she was. Strange that now, as High Fae, he is the only one capable of calming the storm that rages against her walls. The only one who knows how much she needs that. 

Nesta herself didn’t even think she really knew her. But Cassian...She both loved and loathed the effect he had on her. That he had a real and sincere effect on her at all was more than most could claim. Her reactions to him had always been deeper than mere impulsive, surface responses. They were stronger and realer somehow and he...

She thought he would have understood.

The power she can feel burning in her blood is just another aspect of her new self that she despises. Truthfully, it terrifies her. It refuses to bow, break or bend before her – instead it does all those things to her. There’s no way to bow it, no way to crush it or overcome it or master it. It dominates every breath, every movement, every heartbeat, it dominates  _her_. It owns her and controls her and she despises everything about it.

She wishes it had never come to her. She wishes she had never been Made. She wishes...Wishes sometimes that it would simply destroy her. Then at least she would know peace again and those around her would be safe but...

“You’ve got it,” Cassian says bluntly, interrupting the raging torrent of her thoughts. 

He winds the bandage around her shoulder with careful, practiced movements she can’t help but faintly admire. Even through the fog of fear and despair that clouds her mind she can appreciate the skill of his hands. They're surprisingly deft for being so large and rough and belonging to a hardened warrior. 

Checking the tightness every now and then he adds firmly, “And it’s not going to go away.”

She had never expected coddling from him, and had never given it out either. That wasn’t how they were with each other. Honest, upfront, sometimes even raw. But they didn’t pretend with each other. They didn’t lie to each other. They didn’t wear masks.

Nesta had never spent a day of her life trying to be anything other than what she was. Cassian was one of the few people who had never shied away, had never backed down or retreated from her. He had never tried to soften or tame or change her either. He simply saw her and he accepted her as she was. She had never been able to adequately explain to him what a gift that was.

“So,” he continues flatly, “Either you deal with this, learn how to handle it, how to control it; or it’s going to tear you apart.”

Another snarl bursts from her and she curses the new Fae side to her bitterly as it does. Her emotions have always boiled within her. They've always filled her with roaring fire but before... Before they drowned the woman she had been in that Cauldron and replaced her with the monster she had become... She had been able to control them.

The ice, the disdain, the indifference, had all been part of the mask she’d worn to hide the raging feeling that warred beneath the surface of her. Every day it cracked a little more and with Cassian...She hated and craved him all at once.

 Hated him because he saw her – and always had somehow – he knew everything she tried to hide and why. And he knew something even she wasn’t sure if at times. He knew  _her_ , the person she truly was beneath the masks, beneath the armour.

And she craved him because he helped. Nesta couldn’t explain how or why but he helped. The power in her never seemed so strong when he was there. The heightened senses made her feel sick and disorientated. It was as though the overwhelming cacophony of experiences she was continually assaulted with were slowly driving her insane. She had no idea how to handle them or process them. But when he was here...Somehow they weren't as bad.

The sense of claustrophobia that dogged her like a shadow. And the consuming desire to tear herself free of her new skin. The need to escape what she had become... None of them were never as urgent when Cassian’s rough hands brushed gently against her. He gentled them, somehow. 

A part of her hates him for that too. That part resents that he can have such a strong effect on her, good or bad. She had indulged in it for a moment there, taken comfort and refuge in him but now a more familiar port calls to her. 

Anger. Her best and favourite crutch through these last long years comes to her now. It’s a known anchor in the storm tossed, fathomless ocean of blind, terrified uncertainty that she clings to now. She's relying on it to stop her from drowning in the uncomfortable truth of his words.

“ _You_  don’t get to lecture me about dealing with my shit,” she snarls at him, voice low and deadly.

If she’d spoken like this in their cottage or manor not even Elain would have dared push her. No-one would have even remained in the same area as her. But Cassian just blinks at her, barely reacting at all. The fury inside her only builds to a towering inferno as a result.

“Not after the way you behaved,” she spits, jerking her head towards his still damaged wings.

That baits a reaction from him. His usually, unexpectedly soft, warm hazel eyes seem to darken, like thunderheads gathering to blot out a once clear sky.  Vindictive pleasure flares through her like lightning snapping through his storm clouds. But it’s tinged with a bitter shred of guilt. The words had been a low blow. They’d gotten a response from him, as she’d wanted, but it had been a cold, cruel way of getting under his skin.

She doesn’t care.

She’s never lived her life trying to smile and please others and make them love her. Only Elain could ever do that. With her genuine, innocent sweetness; she had a gentle soul that was near impossible to hate. Nesta was a different sort of creature – even before the Cauldron had torn her apart and Made her into  _this._ It had always been near impossible for anyone to love her. She had given up trying to make them a long time ago.

Some small, almost childish instinct whispers that this is a good thing. Better to push him away now by being herself than suffer the sting of rejection later on when he turns on her. It will be easier to take him being gone if she’s the one that made it happen, she tells herself.

But he doesn’t leave her. He doesn’t spit at her and curse her and walk away. He doesn't back down. He doesn't slink off somewhere else to find someone who isn’t too harsh and cold and bitter to swallow. Cassian instead leans in to her. His eyes are flashing with the worthy challenge he’s found in her. He is an equal, one who gives back as good as he gets from her. She should have known better than to expect him to run. 

“And you were the one who told me to pull myself together and deal with it, remember, Nesta?”

For a moment she falters, never letting him see, but he throws her off balance. Every other person she’s met seemed to cower before her, like a stalk of wheat before a raging gale. They bent when she turned her wrath on them. Not one had dared to oppose her or stand against her. She had been a lonely queen of a terrified kingdom.

Cassian sees the hurricane of her rage coming for him and only laughs his defiance in response. Where others would have shrank down and submitted he rises up and challenges her in turn. He baits her, pushes her, taunts her,  _dares_  her. He takes her as she is. He sees her, the cold, hard woman he once spat at for allowing her sister to risk herself to provide for them. And now understands her too.

He knows that he cannot demand that a force of nature change for him. In that they’re alike – and in more than that, a faint part of her whispers. So he handles her, in a way no-one else ever could, in a way no-one else would ever have even attempted to. 

He’s...Different. Unlike anyone else she’s ever met. Hard and soft all at once; a gentle warrior; a compassionate killer; a kind battle commander; a good man.

And somehow; some faint but insistent feeling deep in her gut whispers that he’s  _hers_. Her counter and balance. Her match, able to handle her without ever conquering her. Her equal – one who can and will always give as good as he gets. Her destruction or her salvation, the one who has the potential to be either or somehow both at once. When most of the men around her had struggled her entire life to be anything to her at all... This man; Cassian; was everything. And she had no idea how to respond to that.

Instinctively her walls slammed up again, the only thing she knows to do. She withdraws behind gates of ice and steel, to a place no-one could ever touch her, ever hurt her again. Then she tries to push him away, wound whatever part of him still wants to help her or be near her so he doesn’t.

“I  _am_  dealing with it,” she spits at him, trying to pull away.

 Lie. He knows it. She can see that reflected in his deep hazel eyes. It’s tearing her apart – exactly as he’d said it would. That insight into her, her vulnerability, her  _weaknesses_ something she usually hides so carefully, infuriates her. The way he sees her infuriates her. The way he keeps pushing to help her infuriates her. 

“No.” He says simply, bluntly, his eyes meeting hers, steady and unyielding, “You’re not.”

His voice is flat and matter-of-fact as he rips out her innermost fears, her darkest secrets, and airs them to the night. It's as though they’re obvious, as though she wears them on her skin for any who care to glance and see. “You’re running away from this. You’re behaving like a child, Nesta.” Her lip curls back from her teeth as she snarls at him again, an impressive sound, like thunder roiling in her chest, layered and menacing. 

 But Cassian just leans in closer, his voice low and deadly quiet. “And you’re putting the people around you at risk. You’re putting the people you  _love_ at risk because of your own stubborn foolish pride.”

Rage builds in her as it so often does and for a moment she wants to roar at him. She wants to scream at him. She wants to hit him where it will hurt the most. She wants to shred every nerve until he feels what she feels. For a moment she wants to strike him but then she looks into those deep hazel eyes and the desire dies.

There’s no malice in them, no spite or cruelty. Sometimes she doesn’t think he’s capable of such things, not even for his enemies. There’s only truth in there. He knows. He’s right.  _Elain._

They had fought the other day. She had desperately shared some of her wilder hopes for them being made mortal again. They could be normal again. They could go back to the lives they’d had. They could live in the world they belonged to. And they could live without these instincts and senses and powers that were slowly destroying her from the inside out.  

Without looking at her, Elain had quietly insisted that they  _couldn’t_  go back. And that a part of her didn’t want to. Terror and grief and guilt and that damned eternal  _anger_  had burned in her so violently and she had snapped –  _snapped_  – at Elain.

 And the power had torn through her blood like liquid fire and erupted out of her without her consent. It had knocked Elain back and shredded the delicate little garden she’d been working on so carefully. With a wounded cry, Nesta had dived for her sister, apologising over and over again while she shook and wept. But Elain had only hurried away with a choked sob and a glimmer of fear. She had left Nesta alone in the ruins, staring at her trembling hands with horror.

_Elain_.

One of the few people in this world she loves and will love whatever happens, to the very end of her tortured, cursed, immortal existence. Elain. Elain.  _Elain._ Ever since she was Made she’s done nothing but hurt her, her sweet, gentle sister who never deserved any of this. But Nesta has only put her at risk when she was supposed to protect her, when she had  _sworn_  to protect her.

That stark fact proves to be too much when it falls beneath Cassian’s gentle gaze. The pressure that’s been bowing her down for weeks now finally breaks her completely. And she shatters.

****

 

 


	2. Breathe Again

Cassian looks into her wild, storm tossed eyes and finds fire blazing in them. For a few heartbeats Cassian is sure she’s going to strike him for that. Maybe he deserves it, for crossing that line when she was already so close to the edge. But she had needed to hear it. He had needed to find some way to get through to her before she seriously hurt someone – most likely herself.

Whatever the consequences he’s prepared to take them. So he braces himself for the blow he’s sure is coming. Either with fists or with words she’ll hit where it hurts him the most and he’s ready to take it. As punishment for going too far or just for the sake of the release she so desperately needs. He’s ready.

Only it never comes.

Instead he watches her utterly shatter right in front of him.

The thrill of wariness that had shot through him in response to the fire he had sparked in her eyes is nothing compared to this. As he watches it flicker and die an odd sense of defeat sweeps through him. He would rather she had hit him. He would rather that fire destroy him, reducing him to ash; than the cold wasteland before him that leaves them both desolate. 

Her head hangs down between her violently shaking shoulders. She seems to suddenly cave in on herself, crumpling before him. It's as though the weight of the world has become too heavy for her to carry on her steel shoulders any more.

 Cassian manages to make her out when she chokes out hoarsely, “I failed her.” The way her voice is muffled by the thick emotions that obviously clog her throat and the way she directed those words at her knees makes something in him ache. 

Cassian stills, guided by a deeply rooted instinct born of his time as an army commander. Speaking with his men, empathising with them, helping them talk through their trauma gave him an instinct for this. That combined with something  _deeper... S_ omething stronger and more insistent even than those instincts coaxes him into staying quiet. He gives her space and time, lets her explain in her own time and her own way.

****

Cassian says nothing. He doesn't question or urge more from her after that blunt, harsh statement. The damning words had been so vague, almost begging him to seek further explanation from her. But in spite of that he doesn't push her on it. Through the haze of guilt and fear and pain and grief she registers a faint, near silent pulsing of... _gratitude_  towards him tugging on the fringes of her consciousness.

But the cursed emotions tearing her apart smother that in a heartbeat, making her wonder if it was ever there at all. She’s pitched back into that abyss once more – one she doesn’t think even Cassian can pull her out of.

“I didn’t protect her,” she spits out, self disgust in every syllable. “I didn’t stop them hurting her. I didn’t stop them from shoving her into that Cauldron and holding her down-“ She gags reflexively at the memories that swell inside her head, blotting out everything else.

Elain screaming and fighting helplessly against the inhumanly strong Fae bastards who had her. Elain being forced into the Cauldron and held down. Nesta screaming and screaming and screaming for her sister, her sweet, gentle sister. Who they had turned into the monster of her childhood right in front of her eyes.

The depthless black fathoms are swallowing her up again. They stuff themselves into her mouth and nose, suffocating her, drowning her in pitch,  _killing_  her. Then they spark. And the fire bursts through her entire body reducing her to nothing. Only ash and dust and screaming silence are left of her. And from the ashes of her former self the Cauldron had forced something else- something  _worse-_  to rise.

“They hurt her,” she whispers. Her hands curl into fists, nails biting deep into her palms. “They  _destroyed_ her. My sister. My little sister. And I- I  _let_  them.”

“Nesta-“ Cassian murmurs, deep voice incredibly gentle.

She ignores him. All the rage and pain and disgust and guilt she’s kept locked up behind iron walls for so long are slowly filling her up. It had been stretching every fraying seam within her past breaking point. And  it has finally found an outlet, now it’s begun to release she can’t stop it and she doesn’t want to. It’s like a poison in her and she needs to get it out, all of it, before it kills her.

So she refuses to let him quiet her or soothe her the way she knows he wants to, the way she knows he can. Instead she stumbles blindly on. All the while she hopes that he’ll manage to catch her when she inevitably slips over the looming cliff edge she’s dancing so dangerously close to.

“I always protected her,” she tells him, the words spilling from her in a tangled mess. “I always took care of her. Always. I  _always_ did that. I stopped her getting hurt. I looked after her, that’s what I did.”

Her words ring hollow, even in her ears. They sound childish; repetitive and oddly blank but it seems important to tell him, to make sure he understands. It was the only thing she had ever done in that cottage, looking after Elain. Not Feyre, Feyre had always been capable of taking care of herself – of all of them.

Secretly,  Nesta had always resented her for that. For doing what she never could. So she had focused instead on Elain. She had tried to shield her from whatever she could. She had encouraged her hope and her quiet strength. She had tried to make sure that her light – the only light any of them had had in that hovel – had never gone out.

It was the only thing she had ever done. The only thing she had ever done right.

“I would have done  _anything_  for her,” she whispers.

Her whole body is shaking uncontrollably. But she knows that Cassian will understand that. If anyone in this world could understand the lengths she would have gone to to keep Elain alive and safe it's him. For her she would have fought, stolen, killed for, sold herself, _died_. For her she would have allowed them to tear her wings from her back just as long as it would have helped her sister.

“But when she needed me – when she really  _needed_  me to be there for her, to save her-“

 When she had been sobbing and fighting and  _screaming-_  The way she had screamed... The sound is something Nesta knows she’ll never forget no matter how long she lives in this immortal body. It still haunts her. It echoes through her dreams. It's become the horrifying backdrop to the nightmares she now expects. They visit her every night. And the cacophony of her sister’s screams torment her over and over and over again.

“I failed her,” she breathes again. Her eyes are wide, staring at the same spot on the ground without looking away, or truly seeing anything. “I did  _nothing_.”

She had roared and raged and howled and fought with absolutely everything she was, everything she had, but it hadn’t done a damn thing. The world hadn’t listened or cared or bowed to her will. It had been utterly indifferent as it had idly torn away everything she had. Unconcerned as it wrecked everything she loved.  Uncaring as it finally obliterated everything she had been.

She might as well have thrown stones at an empty sky to try and get the attention of an ignorant god for all she’d been able to do. Useless. A burden. As she’d been all her life.

“I didn’t protect her. I couldn’t protect her. I failed her,” she chokes out.

The words trip off of her tongue without conscious thought, tumbling over each other in their haste to leave her. Those same things have repeated over and over again in her mind. As though she’s still in shock over something that happened months ago and all she can do is replay it again and again.

Tears spill from her eyes before she can call them back and stop him seeing the extent of her grief and horror. She hates allowing anyone being around her when she feels this vulnerable and out of control. And yet some part of her wants to move closer to him, wants to beg him not to leave her, wants him to comfort her even if she doesn’t deserve it.

Slowly, tentatively, Cassian’s large, rough, callused hand lifts and reaches out to her with an air that suggests it's responding somehow to her silent plea. Nesta looks up at him in time to meet his eyes as he tenderly cups her cheek. The softness in the gesture would have been startling coming from a muscled, warrior male as strong as he had she not known him.

With aching care he lightly swipes her tears away with the ball of his thumb. He had done the same thing for her months ago when she had still been mortal. He had wiped her tears away when they had both fought together to convince the queens to help Rhys and Feyre. As it had been then the gesture connects her to him more strongly than she’s ever been bonded to anyone else in her life.

The world dissolves again to contain nothing but his rich, smooth hazel eyes and the space from them to hers. Only he exists to her as everything else drains away leaving only them there. Her lungs slowly expand at his touch, at his tenderness for the first time since she was Made she can  _breathe._ Her trembling body slumps with the flooding release that accompanies the sense of relief that sweeps through her like a cool breeze rippling over a scorched, parched desert.

Unconsciously, on some unknown instinct she somehow trusts, Nesta finds herself leaning in to him. She finds herself wanting him, accepting him, thanking him for the measure of calm and quiet he manages to infuse her with. Gentle feeling seeps through her fractured, stricken nerves that have long since been deadened to everything around her.

“I understand,” Cassian murmurs softly to her. His thumb is still lightly stroking her cheek with an almost absent air that suggests he doesn’t quite realise that he’s doing it.

 Nesta raises her eyes from her knees and looks at him, really looks at him. Past the battered Illyrian warrior who has survived everything the world has thrown at him. She sees through that to the still warm and tender heart that beats beneath his fighting leathers. All the decades of pain he’s endured he’s never let harden him or turn him bitter and cold. It had only taken a few short years to corrupt her own now icy heart, though.

Somehow she can feel the empathy and compassion radiating through her from him. And with that she understands. She understands why he’s still here, why he hasn’t walked away from her despite her cruelty and her spite.

Because when he looks at her he sees her too. And he understands her in a way no-one else has ever even bothered to try and do.

****

“I failed her too.” Cassian says quietly, staring unflinchingly into those storm tossed blue-grey eyes of hers as he says it.

He needs her to understand. He needs her to look at him and see him, find that anger within herself once more and hurl it at him as she has every right to do. But Nesta only watches him with a guarded expression, giving away nothing as he goes on.

“I failed you both,” voice shaking despite his best efforts to control it he makes himself keep going. She deserves to hear this. Especially with the guilt she carries over her own inability to save her sister. “I made a promise to you-“ he rumbles, still holding that piercing ice and steel gaze of hers, “-To protect you and yours. I failed to keep it when you needed me to.”

That failure, the guilt of it that lays thickly on his bones like a lead coating, weighing him down. It's a constant reminder of all the things he hadn’t done. It’s haunted him almost as much as losing his wings in the wake of everything that had happened. The broken promise has been slowly corroding away his soul, a cliff-face battered by a relentless ocean tide.

And now he realises the similar burden she’s been carrying and he curses himself for it. He should have told her all of this sooner, should have shelved his pride and cowardice and just told her. It’s clear these are words she needed to hear a long time ago.

Nesta’s eyes remain fixed upon him, unflinching, unblinking, unreadable. He holds them throughout his confession and the ringing aftermath that follows it as he waits for her rage to break over him like a thunderhead ripping open to scour the land with its downpour.

Instead, she lifts her hand from its limp resting place in her lap and gently cups his cheek. Cassian blinks in surprise at the gesture, at the contact and his blood boils. But not with heat or lust or desire but something...deeper. Something _more_. Something that tastes like compassion. Her thumb faintly scrapes over the rough stubble at his jaw as she strokes it and he shudders.

“There was nothing you could have done,” she says quietly. Her voice is restrained and somehow flatter than usual. But it's also more sincere and somehow warmer for that. “I know you fought for me, and for Elain. I know you tried.”

She swallows, her fingers flexing convulsively against his face. When she next speaks her voice is low and quivers with a thick pulse of emotion he feels whisper through him. “I felt you fight for me.”

A shudder runs through her and she hugs herself but Cassian stills, feeling as though she’s stolen away every last gasp of air from his lungs.

“You were in so much pain...”

The king’s warning. Azriel before him. The flash of power. The instinct to protect his brother. The terrible price he had paid for his life. The agony that had sheared through his back, unlike any he’d ever felt before.

“But you still tried to fight for me, to help me.”

Her voice brings him back from the torrent of memories and then stops his heart all at once. His head pounds with the unspoken words that whisper faintly through him, sounding like her.  _No-one has ever done that for me before._

No-one fights for a hurricane. No-one tries to look after a force of nature. No matter its need. They run from it. As they run from her.

The hand on his cheek clenches slightly, lifting his face, making him look at her again. Drawing in a deep, unsteady breath Nesta looks straight into his fire-hardened hazel eyes. Then she murmurs with soft sincerity, “I forgive you.”

“Nesta-“ he whispers back. He stares at her with a mix of awe and wonder no-one has managed to inspire in him for centuries.

Those words don’t come easily to her, he knows, forgiveness is earned, and rarely at that. It's as though she can somehow sense the unusual blend of confusion and uncertainty in him. Because she takes a slow breath and tries to explain, “I wanted to hate you.”

He tenses at the admission, at the honesty, her damnation as raw and sincere as her forgiveness. Nesta Archeron is not a woman to wear masks or play games – not with him – neither has time for it. A part of him dares to wonder, dares to dream, if that’s what draws her to him. The knowledge that he neither expects nor wants her to be anything or anyone other than what and who she is. She doesn’t have to hide herself around him or soften her edges or fear his judgement. He wonders if she feels the same odd but compelling sense of...freedom around him that he feels when he’s with her.

“I wanted to blame you. I wanted to say that it was your fault – that it was anyone’s fault but my own.” Her hands curl into tight fists at her sides and her face contorts into a mix of that ever present anger tempered by guilt and disgust as she lowers it again. “I wanted to scream and rage at you and say you should have done more but-“ She lifts her face again, making her shining eyes meet his once more as she whispers, “I couldn’t.”

Confusion and something...something like compassion radiates from her, lapping gently against him like a tentative tide. He realises in a stark flash, like lightning illuminating a pitch dark sky, that she understood him too well to fool herself like that. Some deep part of her, the part that connects her to him had known him better than he had ever been allowing himself to comprehend. And in that one moment they both see and feel and know the same inescapable truth. He had done everything in his power to help her and her sister that day – and more.

But even so, what she’s offering him with her forgiveness, this gift of absolution – a gift he would accept from none but her. Because only from her can it be real. Because only she understands him. Only she understands what she’s giving him with this blunt, raw honesty. Only she understands the promise he made to her, the depth of it and what it did to him to feel like he had broken it.

Mouth dry, throat almost painfully tight he hoarsely gets out her name again. “Nesta-“ he begins, with no idea what to say to her next.

But she renders the need to find words he doesn’t have utterly unnecessary a moment later. Forestalling his non-existent reply she places her hand against his chest over his heart. Staring at it as though for a moment she can’t quite believe it’s there either she then flexes her fingers, settling. A look of hard, determined certainty blazes in her intoxicating eyes.

There they remain. Her voice is full of that power over herself and her truths she’s always commanded when next she speaks. It's now returned to her in full force, any trace of softness gone, “You swore to bleed and fight for me.” Her voice is steel, brilliant and unyielding, as though she can sense his linger hesitation and doubt and seeks to wash him clean of it, leaving no trace. “You did. You bled and you fought for me – more than anyone ever has before. It’s done; that debt has been paid.”

Cassian wishes he could tell her what those words mean to him. After weeks in which the failure to keep that promise has steadily corroded his fractured soul... He wishes he could express the full weight of the emotion that’s bearing down on his chest and making it difficult to breathe in the face of her fire-hardened gaze.

But when he meets her eyes again he realises that he doesn’t have to. She understands him.

Slowly, he bows his head in acceptance, a strand of his dark hair falling into his eyes. When he looks up again she’s turned away again. Cassian doesn’t react quickly enough to counter the impulse that makes him reach out and take her chin between his thumb and forefinger. Gently he angles her face to have her look up at him again.

“You should keep some of that forgiveness for yourself, Nesta,” he rumbles. He keeps his voice low and soft as he reminds her quietly, “You fought for her too.”

****

“Not hard enough,” she retorts, shaking her head, an edge to her words. This time she pulls away from their contact. “I should have stopped it,” she murmurs faintly.

She doesn’t know why she says it. She doesn’t know why she’s said half of what she has to him but this... The effect he somehow has on her, making her open up to him, making her  _trust_ him...It terrifies and exhilarates her all at once.

“I should have saved her.”

There it is. Her greatest secret. Her greatest weakness in the wake of everything that’s happened. And she's laid bare before him, offered it up like a weapon, hilt first, with no resistance, giving him the power to do with it what he will. She’s handed him the power to thrust it directly into her now unguarded heart with ease if he wants to.

But there’s such gentleness in his next words that she remembers why she could hand him that sword with her heart unguarded in the first place. Something in his eyes seems to shift and darken as though the heart he wears on his sleeve the same way she wears her armour of ice and indifference withdraws, pulling deeper inside him.

 Then he says, his voice rough and uneven, “I’ve fought in more battles than I care to name.” Her spine straightens as he speaks those words. Something pangs tightly within her chest, as though some wicked creature is pulling on her heartstrings like a bow. “And when I stepped onto each killing field I knew not all of the warriors around me would walk off it again. I knew I might not either.”

Her throat clenches at that, at the thought of him not being here with her. He could have been killed in some battle centuries ago. In a place she’s never seen by a faceless monster before she was born, before she was even thought of. It rattles a part of her she never knew existed. Somehow she knows as their eyes meet again, without understanding  _why_ , that she would rip this world to shreds and shatter its very bones to keep him safe.

“When Rhys made me his Commander I knew that I would have to order my warriors to fight and that some of them I would order to die.” She swallows at the shadows that pass across his bright, charming face at that. They hollow him and make her wonder what horrors he’s witnessed because of his position.

“When they died-“ He breaks off. Swallows. Tries  again, voice hoarse now, “When I  _watched them_  die, I mourned them, every one.”

She has no doubt of that. She can almost see their names staring out at her from those heavy hazel eyes. She's sure he still remembers every one. 

“I wished I could have saved them. I still do. I would have done anything to protect them and let them go home.”

She fights the urge to reach out and take his hand in hers.

“But I learned to stop telling myself that I  _should_  have saved them.” She meets his gaze again as his words strike the chord in her they were meant to. “My guilt and self pity do not help those who are gone; or those they leave behind.”

He reaches out and cups her cheek in one of his large, rough hands. “You cannot save everyone, Nesta,” he tells her, voice low and thrumming with emotion. “You can give everything you have; everything you are – and more – and sometimes this world will still spit on you because it’s not enough. This is one of the cruellest realities we face. But it’s something you need to learn how to live with. Or else that guilt will break you and leave you with nothing to give and no fight left.”

He looks into her eyes again and she looks into his and finds them now devoid of the shadows that had gripped him. They are filled instead with fire and a flicker of something she might have sworn was pride. Those feelings seem to swell as he rumbles, “I do not think you are done fighting just yet, Nesta Archeron.”

No. She’ll never be done fighting, never be done burning and ravaging. There will always be  _something_  but-

“I don’t know what I’m fighting  _for_ anymore,” she whispers. Her voice is so faint that had they not been so intimately alone he might not have heard. But he does.

It’s been gnawing away at her for so long now though that here with him she can’t stop it slipping out. It had always been clear to her, so clear, always. But now...In this new body that belongs to her without really being  _hers. I_ n this place she was taught to loathe all her life which she now lives in... Everything feels  _wrong._

Everything she had once believed. Everything she had known. Everything she had. Everything she  _was_ has been twisted and marred and altered until it has become unrecognisable. Like a rug pulled roughly out from under her, her world has been wrenched away leaving her disorientated and lost.

“Elain is dealing with  _it_.” She spits out the last word with a mixture of exasperation and disgust. Impatiently she gestures at her body and then at the deep scars the room around them bears after the explosion of her magic and the destruction it had wrought.

“She was scared and upset and angry at first but now... She’s learned to accept it,” she grits out, unable to keep the tint of incredulity from her voice.

Her sister had always been the most adaptable of them. She had been the one that had still somehow managed to  _live_ in that house while the rest of them had only ever survived. In the beginning the violation of their creation, what it meant for her, the loss of her engagement, her future, had threatened to tear her apart. But somehow, somehow she had managed to come to terms with it all.

“She’s been able to, to move on and now she...  _She’s_  trying to take care of  _me._ ” It’s difficult to keep the near hysterical sounding trill of laughter from her words as she says that.

That was why she had snapped at her in the garden. Elain’s meek acceptance of the hand fate had chosen to deal them – worse than death and bankruptcy and poverty and starvation. She had wanted to find a way to undo it, to make things go back to the way they were. If they could be Made then logic dictated that they could also be  _Unmade._

Elain had peered up at her with her soft doe’s eyes – still the same in spite of everything – and murmured that perhaps it wasn’t so bad. Perhaps she should let go of what they’d once had, what they’d lost. It was gone and living only in the past was hurting her.

However long Nesta lives she knows the shame of how she reacted, how she snapped, how she lost control of her emotions and the cursed magic always boiling in her blood will never leave her. And nor will the way Elain had looked at her before she had all but fled from her.

Cassian’s fingers softly weave themselves through hers, gently coaxing them out of the tight fist she had scrunched them in to in order to do so.

“It’s okay to let her,” he murmurs, his eyes achingly gentle. “Not even you can take on the entire world alone and come out on top.”

Growling faintly she shakes her head, anger surging even as her throat becomes clogged with frustrated emotion. He doesn’t understand.

“She doesn’t need me any more,” she gets out, furious at the tears that sting her eyes. Fighting them back she rasps, “I’ve always protected her and looked after her and now...” Her head hangs in hopelessness as her body shakes and she finally says the words that have been tormenting her for weeks out loud. “She has a place in this world. I don’t.”

“So  _make_ one,” he growls boldly. She lifts her head at the bite of defiance in his voice that causes something in her gut to stir in response, some part of her that recognises this spirit. “You do not get what you deserve in this world,” he rumbles, “You do not get what you ask for. You get what you demand. You get what you  _take._ You get what you refuse to let yourself be denied.”

A glimmer of fire, stark and hot and fierce burns through her- _his_ fire, kindling her own, roars to life in her then. She doesn’t care if he’s deliberately getting under her skin. She doesn't care if he's deliberately trying to rile her and bait her into responding. She doesn't care that by doing so she’s giving him exactly what he wants.

Her blood burns with the challenge she finds dancing in his bright eyes and for the first time she seems to waken and come into herself. As though she’s spent all her time since first being forced into that Cauldron trapped there, drowning, and this is the first time she’s truly surfaced.

She doesn’t care what he had to do to achieve this, all she knows is she could kiss him for it. Because for the first time in so long she feels  _alive._ And she manages to find  _herself_  within this new body which had previously been little more than a shell to harbour the ghost of the woman she had once been.

Looking into his eyes she tosses back, voice edged in sharpened steel once more, “And what are  _you_  refusing to be denied?”

The low, rasping whisper of his answer, voice like flint scraping over steel, burns straight through her core.

 “Everything.”

****

“My court,” he goes on. He watches her eyes glitter, watches a flicker of that woman he had sparred wits with back in the mortal realm stir in her. He sees a shiver of that woman, that hurricane given form, stare back at him out of her ice and steel eyes.

“My position. The place I have spent five hundred years carving from nothing that they would take from me now because of what I lost in Hybern.”

His wings. Their ruined remains twitch and howl with phantom pains as he tucks them instinctively against his body.

 Her eyes narrow and that fire he glimpsed in her now seems to  _roar_ as she grits out tightly, “What you sacrificed to defend your brother, you mean?”

He only then hears his words as she would have. ‘Lost’ as though it had been his fault, as though there had been no fight, no pain, no terror, no reason. As though there had been no choice to make between his wings and watching his brother die.

There  _had_  been no choice for him. None at all. Between his wings, even if they’re taken from him forever and his brother’s life, Azriel would win each and every time. But she had insisted that there had been a decision and that he had been brave and strong and  _good_ to make it. Those burning cold eyes tell him she hasn’t forgotten or changed her position an inch.

“They would take your position for that?” she breathes, her voice now low and deadly.

A rough, humourless laugh huffs from him at that, “They would take everything.” Her eyes flash, lip curling as he goes on, “My rank, my position, my respect.” A low growl ripples from her but he keeps going, trying to present her with merely the facts even as his blood boils with hot rage.

 “Without my wings I would be considered the lowest of the low in the Illyrian culture.” The thought still terrifies him. “Lower even than an unwanted, lowborn bastard.”

He nearly chokes on the irony of it all. All those years, all the battles, the trials, the politics, the conflict, the struggle, the slaughter. All for nothing. The male he is today would find himself beneath the bastard boy who had trailed through the frigid mud in clothes won in fights to the only home the homeless could ever find. To cold and harshness in the howling forests, death never far.

The gleam in Nesta’s eyes is near feral as a wild animal and she all but snarls her fury. “You did that for your  _brother_ ,” she hisses, “You saved his life, you-“

“They wouldn’t care,” he interrupts, voice brittle and harsh. “They would still see me as nothing without those wings.”

Anger and dread coil in a volatile blend in the pit of his stomach, fracturing the feigned calm he could never truly feel. Terror sweeps in a moment later, his traitorous heart thundering rapidly as it pumps it through his body. That crushing, squeezing panic sets in then. It grips his chest in a vice, like a serpent twisting around his lungs and forces every last breath from them. It leaves him gasping and helpless. Half blind in a rough sea of fear that stuffs itself into his mouth and nose, clogging and choking him.

How can he fight? How can he train? How can he  _lead?_ It had taken him centuries as one of the most powerful Illyrians in history; a peerless flyer, a near invincible warrior to earn their respect, loyalty and obedience. They would never follow not only a bastard but also a cripple- a wingless brute- into battle.

Everything he had worked for. Everything he had taken with his blood and sweat and fierce determination.  _Everything_  had been built on the back of those wings. Warrior. Commander. War hero. Legend.

What was he now? What was he  _now_? Nothing. Nothing.  _Nothing-_

“They’re wrong.” Nesta’s voice, low and certain cuts through his panicked thoughts like a well honed blade piercing skin.

 It’s as though she’s read his mind and something deep within him pulls sharply towards her. Like the chain of an anchor that tethers him to her. He meets her eyes as she crosses her arms over her chest. The gesture is so defiant, so achingly familiar that Cassian almost smiles at it. 

Then she growls, “All of those cowardly Illyrian pricks who would say that are wrong.” She declares it flatly, simply – as though it’s that easy – to deny them, to better them, to  _beat_ them.

“You were strong and brave and  _right_ ,” she states and he feels a flicker of wonder begin to bloom in his chest. He’s rarely seen her this passionate, this riled, and for it to be on his behalf...

“A pair of wings doesn’t make you who or what you are,” she declares boldly. 

She holds him with a fervour that dares him to just try and look away from her, or try and tell her that she’s wrong. He does neither.

“You’re still  _you_ ,” she growls fiercely. He wonders for a moment how he’d  ever managed to bring back her fire but then she goes on, captivating him further and the thoughts flood from his mind. “You’re still a fighter. You’re still a warrior. You’re a commander and a brother and a  _friend_ -“

She breaks off, a dull flush of colour dusting her pale, creamy white cheeks. Now she looks embarrassed, self-conscious even at the outburst. Feyre’s words, about Nesta struggling to love the way Mor does, freely and openly and endlessly come back to him. There’s too much wariness in her for that, too much mistrust and fear of being used, of being hurt.

 For her to feel this strongly towards him, and for her to show him that so openly...Reaching out he takes her small, delicate hand in his and squeezes, “Thank you, Nesta.”

He gentles at her reaction, touched by it, by the way she had defended him. He wants to help her in return. He wants to reach her. He wants to hold her. He wants to kiss her. He wants to make that emptiness he sees in her eyes flood with fire again. He wants to sweep away all of the pain he feels from her.

“And help,” he says quietly. “I can help you, if you want that, if you’ll let me.” She looks up at him again, her eyes heavy with the burden of power that he can feel thrumming through her.

The connection he’s felt whispering between them deepens as something in her pulls to him at his words. “I won’t fail you again,” he growls at her, voice rough and firm.

Another promise. Another bond tethering them together.

Something burns in her blood and he finds himself reaching for her again. He feels compelled to touch her, to physically connect them, to make her understand. “We’ll find a way for you to control this,” he swears softly, squeezing her hand, “We’ll find a way.”

Her eyes gleam and his lips pull back in a wicked smile and he rumbles darkly, “Then you will make them regret what they did to you.”

The same gleam reflects itself in her eyes, from him to her, an echo through their bond, “I swear it,” he vows.

And with those words, with that promise, he feels the bond that had been tentatively murmuring around them snap suddenly taut. It tightens and solidifies until he can  _feel_  it. It’s as though he could touch it, could hold it, could use it to anchor her to this world – to  _him_  – until the end of everything.

He grips her hand and pulls her closer to him until he can feel the heat pouring from her skin. Slowly, he strokes his hand down her arm as he lets his voice lower to a gentle murmur, “You feel alone. And abandoned. But you still have people – people who will help you if you just let them in.”

 She meets his eyes, her own still guarded, still wary, unable to tear down a lifetime of walls for him in a moment. She looks at him like a wild beast, one used to cruelty and harshness, trying to decide whether or not to accept the refuge he’s offering her. A kindness that she has never truly known, the same kindness that had saved his life centuries ago.

Everyone has denied her that – too afraid of her burning cold – but he’s weathered harsher storms than her in the past. He’ll stand hers like all the rest; but not to conquer or to tame – just to gentle for a night so she can breathe.

“You can still find your place in this world,” he murmurs.

For a moment she looks at him and he feels the moment rise and swell between them. It forces them closer together until there isn't a whisper of spaces between them. It drains the room of all air. it winds up to such a pitch that he's sure it's going to snap and shatter them both. He needs it. She needs it. The release. The relief of that tension. He reaches out to it, ready to seize it- 

Then it collapses and the faint light he had managed to kindle in her eyes flickers and gutters out. A candle before a storm. And just as she was beginning to open up and let him in, the tentative connection they’d built up fractures. She shuts him out again.

*****

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

                                              

 


	3. Make Me Feel Something

 

Nesta shakes her head, her voice brittle and hollow and the words are factual, blunt even, when they come. “I don’t think I even know who I am any more, much less where I belong.”

With him. Something whispers within her. It feels like a breeze stirring a still forest and it makes her soul shiver in answer.

Brushing it away she adds, voice now choked and trembling like her clenched fists, no matter how she tries to keep them steady. “I don’t even know what I am anymore.”

Mate. Mate. Mate.  That bond breathes to her again, tugging her to him, enflaming every urge and instinct she already feels for him- the need to be near him, to touch him, to kiss him and just be held by him. She’s never felt that for anyone before but now, with him...

“You are a woman,” Cassian rumbles, his voice deep but low, the way the sky threatens thunder.

Nesta’s eyes find his again, unable to stop herself. It would have been like turning her back on a roaring bonfire. Or deliberately closing her eyes while the sun was rising and painting the sky a rich palette of colours Feyre would die to have at her fingertips. Impossible. His burning hazel eyes hold the same gift when it comes to her. They have the same intensity, the same magnetic, captivating air that reels her in irresistibly. Once she might have claimed that it was magic. She might have accused him of using it against her to manipulate her. Now she knows that it’s just him.

“You are a survivor, a fighter. Unbreakable. Invincible.” She stares at him, something like wonder taking root deep in her chest and blooming like one of Elain’s flowers. If the words had come from anyone but Cassian they would have been flat and empty; easily dismissed and sneered at. But from him they make her feel...Alive again. Herself again.

“You are Hybern’s curse and the king’s destruction. You are a force of nature. You are something this world should fear.” Gently but firmly he hooks his rough, broad fingers beneath her chin and tilts her face up, making her look at him. It lets him look at her too as he says, “You are Nesta Archeron. You are strong. You are resilient. And you are broken.”

A flicker of surprise jolts through her at that- the revelation of her vulnerability. It’s never something anyone has seen in her before. It’s never something she’s ever allowed anyone to see before. It’s always been hidden behind thick walls. And she had never let anyone close enough to know in case they exploited it, tried to wield her jagged edges like weapons and hurt her. But he...

“You are angry and upset. And you are afraid.” He pauses, sensing the tension in her. Voice soft and quiet, meant only for her, not to wound or exploit, only to show her he understands he says, “You are a mess inside. Even if you’ll never let them know.”

Their eyes lock once more and she feels the tension between them strain to the point of being near unbearable. She’s never felt anything like this before. But something that murmurs softly through her from him helps her understand.

_It’s like being on a battlefield_ it breathes in his voice. The two armies are in their positions, no-man’s land between them waiting to swallow their screams and drink the blood set to drain down upon it. It’s like the momentary quiet between the pounding drums and the order to attack. That moment when the world seems to go still, holding its breath, as its future balances on a knife’s edge and silence reigns. For only a heartbeat before the world goes to shit.

“And that’s all right,” he says, his quiet voice breaking the billowing, charged moment that had been brewing between them. The tension still lingers with the oppressive feel of thunderheads hovering over a scene. Dark and heavy, ready to unleash themselves upon the world. 

“How do you know?” Nesta demands, voice honed to an edge sharp enough to kill. “How do you know what I feel?”

No-one ever does. No-one can ever read her, ever understand. Maybe because no-one ever tried. Maybe because he’s one of the few people who ever really bothered- who ever really dared to get under her skin and discover what lay beneath her armour of ice and indifference.

But how can he see her so clearly? How can those hazel eyes lay her so bare before him? How can he know her better than she knows herself at a time when knowing anything at all feels impossible?

As if in answer that connection between them buried deep within her shivers.

“How do you know that I am all of those things?”

That tension between them peaks as he looks straight into her eyes and says, words simple, voice quiet and ragged, breaking just as hers had. “Because I am too.”

The ravaging wildfire that burns through her from the point that bond is anchored in her is unlike anything Nesta has ever felt before. As it consumes her she stops thinking completely. She stops calculating, and considering reactions and consequences, and the wisdom of acting on the impulse. She just acts.

Without warning, Nesta surges for him. Instinct and impulse propel her forwards. She grips the front of his leathers with her hand and pulls him down to meet her mouth in a rough, hot kiss. 

She kisses him the way she’s wanted to kiss him for weeks now. She kisses him the way she’s needed to every time they’ve been in the same room and felt that charged, maddening, impossible energy between them beginning to be released. She kisses him in a way she hasn't dared to kiss anyone before. She kisses him in the way her body, his body, had demanded. She kisses him the way that bond whispers that she should; that she must. 

The kiss is explosive. Rough and messy and a wild, reckless thrill blazes through her at the feel of him, the taste of him. More, more, more. In that moment she stops thinking, stops judging, she simply exists for those few precious heartbeats. She becomes a creature of hunger and desire and emotion. The kind only he can ever drag out of her. The things only he can make her feel. The way only he can make her lose control.

And for him she loses control completely. She strips herself bare before him, sheds the armour she’s worn so long it had begun to feel like a second skin. She lets herself breathe in his arms. She lets him finally rip down every wall and barrier she’d put up between them until there’s only him, only her, only this.

When she had first crashed into him his body had gone rigid against hers as he tensed. Now it softens and melts against hers. They fit together almost too well, Nesta thinks. A part of her wonders if that Cauldron had known, if it had shaped her for this. In his arms, for the first time, her new self feels right. For the first time she realises that she might be able to learn to love it. As he does. 

 His lips begin to move against hers, kissing her back. And at the feel of that Nesta pulls away.

The reality of the situation slams into her with the force of an avalanche. The heat of his mouth, the taste of his tongue, the feel of his hand sliding around her waist to pull her close- It's all too much. 

She feels so out of control when she kisses him. She feels as though she’s just thrown herself from a cliff and has to trust him to catch her. The fall had been such a sweet rush and it’s not what consumes her mind now. 

What’s overwhelming her and confusing her to the point of pushing him away is the fact that she trusted him enough in that moment to fully let go.

****

Her body crashes into his and then she’s kissing him. Cassian can’t quite believe it’s happening. All those weeks of waiting. All that time spent wanting her. Every moment he's spent forcing himself to stay at arm’s length, to keep his distance. All those endless seconds holding himself back and now...Now he’s too damned stunned to do anything about it. 

She had given him no warning, none at all, before she’d pushed herself into his arms. His body had still absorbed the rushing impact of hers on instinct. And then he had frozen. Completely frozen. Like a damned fool struck dumb. Five hundred years of experience and he can't move, can't think, can't comprehend. 

But then her lips had descended on his, kissing him, claiming him. And the shock of her impulsive action had worn off and his body had melded around hers. Instinct had taken over and he had followed it, letting it lead him where it will, letting it take him over.

 He parts his lips, his tongue murmuring gently against hers, guiding her through it. He shivers when she mirrors him and opens her mouth to let him in. The heat of her mouth floods his senses and he groans faintly, pressing his tongue deeply into her- 

Then her spine snaps taut and she’s recoiling, hauling herself away from him as fast and hard as she can. She distances them once more, slamming up her walls and shutting him out again. 

The space between them feels like an abyss, blank and draining and so painfully empty. So agonizingly, unbearably empty without her there. Cassian watches her, still kneeling numbly on the floor where she’d left him as she stands.

Her outline quivers, silhouetted against the stark pale moonlight that floods in from the window bathing her in an ethereal glow. She hugs herself, clearly trying to control her shaking. And he can’t help it. He can’t fight the overwhelming magnetic pull that draws him to her.

He pushes himself to his feet and slowly approaches her, giving her notice and the chance to pull away or stop him if she wants. But she remains exactly where she is, body rigid, back to him. Looking for all the world as though she’s been carved from ice, refusing to move an inch.

“Nesta,” he says softly. Her name falls so naturally from his tongue and tastes so right in his mouth. It’s as though it was made for him to give voice to like this.

She doesn’t answer him, doesn’t look round, tries not to give any sign she’s heard. But he watches the too tight muscles in her back quiver in answer.

“Nesta,” he murmurs again.

Laying a gentle hand on her shoulder this time he dares to come a little closer still. The shiver that ripples through her in response to the touch, to his proximity, travels through him too. Charged tension is still burning in his blood like power. She doesn’t respond any further than that involuntary tremble. But she doesn’t pull away or shake him off either.

“Nesta.”

He dares a little further and slowly, so slowly steps up and nudges gently against her back. It takes every bit of willpower he possesses to refrain from pulling her hard against him. Some raw instinct demands that he do it. He wants to show her how his body craves hers; how it howls at the sudden loss of her. But he keeps himself in check.

When he presses himself gently to her, she melts completely into him with a faint, involuntary whimper that nearly undoes him. Cassian can’t help but feel like there’s a certain rightness in the way they fit together. One that always makes it seem as though the ways they’ve been broken and remade throughout their lives have shaped them for this purpose. And in the way she comes undone for him.

Leaning in close to her he whispers onto her neck, making her tremble at his low, rough voice, “Nesta.”

He breathes in the rich scent of her, the hint of smoke and mint and roses fills his lungs with every breath. Mother, that scent. It's heavy and intoxicating and he swears he could live on nothing but that and the taste of her tongue.

His lips are still hovering against her neck and he grazes them up and down on instinct, just wanting more of her, always needing more. Slowly she tilts her head back until the crown of it rests against his shoulder. He stills completely behind her gazing down at the slender column of her throat, arched out and exposed for him.

Cassian lets the breath hiss slowly from him, barely able to believe that this is happening. Gently, he grazes his teeth against her neck, over her pulse point and she shudders in his arms. Swallowing he does it again. This time he lets his lips brush down and place a faint ring of kisses around various sensitive points. His hands slowly slide around her hips, hugging every curve, and clasp over her stomach. His breath huffs out hot against her skin and she lets a faint whimper escape her in response.

“Nesta,” he groans, unable to help himself.

He places the word so intimately into her skin it feels as though he’s tattooing a piece of himself there. The part of him that encourages him to live for the sound of her voice in his ears. The part of him that roars at the feel of her body pressed against his. The part of him that cries out at the way she makes his heart pound harder and faster than it has in more than five hundred years.

Finally she stirs within the cradle of his arms and turns to face him once more. Those impossible, storm tossed eyes are blazing once more. They cast the hollows within her soul into an even deeper darkness than he thinks she’s ever let anyone see before. She gazes up at him with all the intensity and promise of obliteration of a hurricane about to unleash itself upon the world. Upon him.

****

There’s hunger slumbering in his bright hazel eyes. It stirs there every time he meets her gaze. The same desire burns within her too. It’s unlike anything she’s ever felt before and it terrifies her and exhilarates her all at once. To the point of being too much again, overwhelming every inch of her but she can’t bear for it to stop.

She had been afraid that when she’d pulled away he would have taken it as rejection; would have left her but instead...Instead he had come to her. She had realised the moment she had pulled away, overcome with her own foolish insecurities and boundaries that she had made a mistake. She didn’t want him to stop. She didn’t want him to go.  The moment she had felt his body press softly against hers, as though he’d known somehow what he needed to do she had been sure. Surer than she’s ever been of anything before in her life.

And now – now she wants him. She wants to kiss him. She wants to touch him. She wants to feel him pressed against her with nothing but skin separating their burning souls.

Cautiously, she takes a slow step back, keeping her eyes locked on his. He follows. He comes after her without her ever having to touch him. He’s pulled to her by that magnetic bond between them; borne along in her wake like a feather caught in an irresistible current.

Nesta lets a slow, sultry smile spread across her lips for him.

She takes another step. He mirrors her. Then again. And again. And again. Back and back and back until she’s jolting against the polished wood panelling on the wall behind her. He manages to catch himself and stop a fraction of an inch before crashing into her.

 Their eyes are still fixed wholly on each other, utterly oblivious to the rest of the world around them. It might have been pulled out from under her leaving them alone in an empty space and she wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have cared.

Their chests rise and fall rapidly as though they’ve run to this point all the way from the far side of Velaris. Her mouth goes dry as her body becomes aware of just how close he is, how intimate this moment she’s created between them is. He hovers just above her, so near that she can feel his hot breath gently ruffle her hair as it huffs past his lips. And when he places his hands on the wall behind her, one on either side of her head, and seems to surround her entirely she can’t control the shiver that rattles through her bones in answer.

His scent envelopes her and for once she’s glad of her heightened Fae senses. The rich, dark aroma of freshly turned earth blends with the hot spice of cinnamon and the softer, warmer murmur of fresh baked bread that underscores it all. It reminds her, somehow, strangely of...home. A true home that she could find herself comfortable in, could find herself belonging to. It makes her feel full and whole and she never wants to be parted from him, from this, again.

And it’s not enough. This is not enough. She needs more. More, more, more.  

One of his hands peels itself from the wall and he caresses her cheek tenderly with the backs of his fingers. It’s done with such gentleness, as though he’s afraid that even the faintest touch might bruise her soft skin. He barely skims the surface of her yet wildfire burns within her flesh for him at his touch. And the feelings he inspires that rip free don’t scare her now. Not when he surrounds her so completely. His thumb brushes her skin as he gazes down at her, drinking in every inch of her body as though he wants nothing more than to drown in her.

“Nesta,” he murmurs once again, the word rumbling deep in his chest, reverent, worshipful, desperate.

He leans down, touching his forehead to hers. They’re close, so close. She tilts her head up slightly, her mouth opening, her eyes closing as her lips strain for his but she doesn’t let them touch again. Not yet. Not yet. Not yet. The tension between them feels like tangible thing, both drawing them in and keeping them apart. It drains every whisper of air from her lungs, from the room, from the world until there’s only him.

Slowly, aware of every ragged breath, every pounding heartbeat, every aching second between them, she opens her eyes.

 Locking them with his she strokes a hand down his cheek and whispers tautly, “Make me feel something, Cassian.” Her shiver trembles through them both and she feels his body seize against hers as he seems to stop breathing. Then she adds, her voice a jagged bite, “I dare you,” and he snaps.

That’s all she wants, all she needs – to feel something that isn’t anger or emptiness or desolation. Those dark, hollowing thoughts have been all that’s been inside her since her Making. Her ravaged soul cries out for something else; something more. Because there has to be more than this endless black abyss.

She’d thought she’d felt flickers before, flickers of light, of warmth in the cold darkness. They had come at Elain’s sweet smile, Feyre’s comfortable happiness with her High Lord, the sound of Cassian’s laughter echoing through the hollow space in her chest where her heart was supposed to be....

She wants him to make her feel that again. She wants him to fill her up with it. She wants him to remind her what it is to feel light and safe and good again. She wants him to coax away the darkness that’s crawled into her body and called her bones home for too long now. She wants the gentle sunlight of his being to sweep away the lurking shadows of her own. She wants him.

And he obliges her.

Cassian’s body shifts, pressing in against hers and at last removing that taut, unbearable space between them. Then he kisses her. He swallows the faint, involuntary gasp that had broken from her lips at the feel of him finally laying his muscled body against hers and he kisses her.

But not in the way she had expected – rough and hard and claiming. He’s slow and intense and consuming and she feels the tension drain from her body in answer. Nesta lets her fingers wind through his thick, dark hair, gripping on to him as his mouth coaxes hers to open for his tongue. She allows it and shudders at the feel, letting herself groan softly. He takes the lead and she doesn’t protest it, comfortable with him controlling their pace and movements.

A spark dares to flare within her as their souls strike against each other for the first time and it feels like light, like life, like hope. Drawing away Cassian strokes her hair back, carefully tucking it behind her delicately pointed ear. Then he leans in and murmurs, voice low and rough yet oddly gentle. “Close your eyes.”

Holding his gaze for a long moment she finally does as she’s told. His lips return to hers but don’t linger there. Instead they pull away, just as she was beginning to respond to him. They trail kisses along her jaw and then they find her neck. Nesta shivers as he places a delicate necklace of kisses around her throat. As he does he stops and sucks gently at the spots that make her body tense. He continues until she's panting desperately for breath, unable to get enough into her lungs.

He pauses, his hands resting on either side of her waist, cradling her to him. Tenderly, his fingers tug the lacings holding her dress in place. “I want to take this off of you,” he growls to her. His voice is hungry, deep and layered. His breath is so hot against the sensitive skin of her neck.

Nesta nods her encouragement and only then do his hands rise from her sides to begin pick at her dress fastenings in earnest. As he works his lips drag down over her collarbone and then to the tops of her breasts. Tentative, questioning, but when she shows no signs of protesting he continues. She shivers in place, easing her fingers deeply into his hair and tugging at it. Anticipation winds itself tighter and tighter and tighter around her stomach and she can’t stop the gasp that bursts from her lips that attempts to release some of it.

Finally, he tugs open her corset, parting the two halves like doors to reveal her to him. He groans at the sight of her. Before she can stop herself her hands reach up to cover herself, the feeling of being so exposed becoming too much for her. Cassian looks up at her and colour floods her cheeks. There’s nothing in his eyes to make her but she still feels like a child. She's suddenly self-conscious in a way she’s never been before. But he’s five centuries old, with all that experience and she...

Swallowing down her unease she stares defiantly back at him, silently daring him. She expects him to speak. She expects him to try and soothe her, to say please, to offer some empty compliment to try and make her feel better. The kind that would only succeed in making her feel worse. But he doesn’t.

Wordlessly, he begins to undo the silver fastenings of his tunic. He intends to bare himself to her too; to make them equal. Her eyes go wide and her heart flutters as that bond between them goes taut, shuddering with her gratitude at his understanding.

Reaching out slowly she covers his hands with one of hers, stopping him. If he got to undress her, she wants to undress him in turn. This time, this first time, she wants to do it, wants to peel away all of these layers and expose him to her on her terms. He yields at once to her touch, dropping his hands and giving himself to her. Nesta forgets about her own vulnerability at being before him in nothing but skin as she slowly reveals him to herself.

His tanned chest ripples with muscle and she can feel the power that blazes beneath her hands as she places them flat over his pectorals. Scars pepper his skin and her eyes are drawn to them, relics of long forgotten battles and conflicts. But it’s the Illyrian markings on his chest and arms that catch and hold her attention.

Slowly, idly, her fingers trace the tattoos that creep over his shoulders like black smoke. A part of him. As much as the sword that had been strapped along his spine. And as much as the title of army commander, the aura of which seems to burn around him and the bright, intense hazel eyes that pierce to her very core. They’re a part she can’t seem to help but explore.

Pausing when she feels him start to shake, she looks up at him again to find him drinking in the steady curves of her body. There’s such unguarded hunger in his eyes that she finds herself trembling involuntarily too. No-one has looked at her like this before. No-one has ever made her feel like this before either.  

Swallowing hard he breathes, gaze still roving over her, “You’re beautiful.” Every syllable is etched out in awe.

She huffs at this. “You could sound less surprised about it,” she chides, eyes dancing as she folds her arms across her chest.

He starts, looking taken aback until he sees the rare glimmer of mischief in her eyes. A broad, wicked grin spreads across his face. Stepping in close again, his body pressing flush against hers he lets his voice drop, becoming low and guttural and starved. “I want to kiss you,” he rasps onto her skin.

Winding her fingers deeply into his hair she breathes back, words dripping with something like challenge. “Then kiss me.”

He does.

And this is the kiss she had expected from him. This is the kind of kiss she had craved from him. It’s rough and hot and hard and consumes every piece of her – like wildfire tearing across a lake of oil and she basks in the heat as it surges through her. The release that accompanies it is worth it, worth it all. Nesta lets herself burn in this embrace. She lets her blood boil and her body melt into him as he sets fire to her nerves and lets her blaze.

She doesn’t even notice his fingers tugging at her dress until it pools around her feet. The action leaves her utterly naked save a small pair of lacy underwear she doubts will last long before him.

 Thinking she understands the rules in this intense game of theirs – like for like – she begins fumbling with the laces of his trousers. Gently but firmly he catches her wrists in his hands and makes her stop. Blinking in confusion she stares at him but her demand for an explanation dies in her throat at what he does next.

Slowly, reverently, his hazel eyes never leaving hers, Cassian sinks to his knees before her.

Her mouth goes dry and something snaps in her at this sight. It leaves her feeling limp and boneless. This Illyiran warrior, a male thrumming with strength and power, lowering himself to the ground before her, gazing up at her with such wonder. It's too much. 

“What are you-“ she begins, voice hoarse.

But he cuts her off before she can finish the sentence with a rich smile. “Trust me, “he urges quietly, his voice heavy with promise.

Taking a breath she closes her eyes and lets herself relax. Submitting to him. Trusting him. She can somehow feel the gentle smile on his lips when he begins to kiss her thighs, soft and faint to begin with, warming her up. Then he nudges her legs apart and strokes her through her underwear with a single, rough, callused finger.

Losing patience with this teasing as her body shudders, Nesta begins to tug the lace fabric barrier out of his way to spur him on. With a deep chuckle he growls, “Please. Allow me.” Then he covers her smaller hand with his own, taking over and easing them down her legs before tossing them aside.

She expects him to stand, to lift her in his arms and press her into the wall and claim her. A thrill of mingled fear and excitement shoots through her at the prospect. But instead he lets his fingers glide slowly up and down and up and down her leg. The rough edges of his calluses scrape at her smooth skin but she likes the feel of it. With each pass his finger climbs higher and higher and higher towards the exposed flesh he’s just revealed.

Just as she’s beginning to shudder for him, sighing in to the touch, her body growing used to the pleasant feeling, he stops. She doesn’t have a chance to growl her displeasure. He wastes no time in sliding a hand up under her thigh and lifting it, coaxing it over his shoulder – careful of his wing – spreading her before him. He groans softly in approval at her scent, at her body’s reaction to him.

“Cassian-“ she begins, low and impatient.

Her words die, splintering into a rough gasp as he lets his lips start dragging up and down her inner thigh. She closes her eyes, wanting to feel nothing but the heat of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth against her skin. It feels good, better than good. Her whole body shudders in anticipation. She finds herself silently begging him to go a little higher and a little higher and a little higher.

When he finally kisses between her legs at last she feels her heart slam to a stop for a moment. Without conscious thought her spine curves like a drawn bow, her body arching against him. His tongue strokes her lazily and she chokes on the moan that fights to get out of her in response. He roughly growls his approval at this, at the way she reacts for him. Then he lets go of a little more of his self control, kissing and sucking her with relish.

Nesta fists a hand in his hair and tugs hard. “Cassian,” she snarls, the word unmistakably a command.

He stops as her body starts pulsing with pleasure and she grits her teeth to push down the snarl that builds in her chest. “Manners sweetheart,” he teases lightly. His lips murmur idly up and down her inner thigh again close, so close, but not close enough. His breath huffs over her skin, hot and tempting as he whispers, “Say please.”

“Bastard,” she spits out furiously at him. Then freezes, regretting the word choice. But he chuckles, immediately putting her at ease, relaxing her body once more and she feels her impatience rising again. Along with the growl in her throat. Cassian’s laughter huffs against her thighs again. In the next moment his tongue is stroking her centre once more. Slow, steady licks, enough to wind her up but not enough to finish her. Not enough, not enough, not enough.

“More,” she rasps out, voice low and desperate pulling again at his hair as she speaks.

She might have said she was begging him. If not for the fact she never begged for anything. When he eases a finger up inside her, in the next heartbeat she changes her mind about that.

“Please,” she whispers hopelessly, body quivering as pleasure swells in her core. “Please, please. More.” She says, the words bursting from her in a cry.

 Cassian pauses just long enough to give her a broad, satisfied male smile, his lips wet with her, his eyes over bright and hungry. Then he buries his mouth between her thighs again, increasing his pace and obeying her command. A moment later something splinters inside her and release barrels through her.

His name bursts from her lips like a shooting star before she can contain it. And in that instant her body, her heart, her soul, her entire being belong to him.

****

“I’ve got you, sweetheart, I’ve got you,” he murmurs to her. Her legs are trembling, her head leaning back against the wall. She's shaking with the force of the feeling that just burned through her. Cassian braces his hands on her hips to keep her upright and steady as she pants, coming down from her high.

A moment later her eyes snap open and she looks down at him with starving hunger. She roughly grasps one half of his open tunic and uses it to pull him sharply to his feet and slam him against her. He gasps at the force of the impact and he opens his mouth to check that she’s alright. But then her mouth is on his and she’s kissing him hard and every thought that isn’t about the feel of her soft, warm lips on his and the taste of her filling him is swept from his head.

He responds to her in kind, testing her limits just a little as he presses her back into the wall. One hand fists itself in her thick golden curls, shaping her movements. Lifting her into his arms without breaking the kiss he carries her slowly towards the bed. Every inch of his body screams for him to go faster, to throw her down and climb on top of her and claim her. But he gives her time to let him know if she’s not ready to go this far with him just.

But Nesta, it seems, has had enough waiting. 

As he walks them across the room her fingers urgently grapple with the fastenings that secure his tunic around his wings. As soon as they’re undone she tugs it sharply from his shoulders and sends it to the floor before he’s gone more than a few feet. She’s rid him of his trousers as well before he’s managed to put her down and he laughs at her hunger.

That laugh turns to a growl as she grinds herself against him, smirking in satisfaction at his response. When they at last reach the bed he lays her onto it as gently as he can. Her eyes rove hungrily over his now naked body, taking him in properly for the first time.

Perching on the edge of the bed, correctly reading the new flicker of doubt and nervousness in her eyes that’s cooling her heat he pauses. Cupping her cheek in his hand he promises softly, “We’ll go slow.”

She nods, gratitude rushing through him from her. Then she crawls forwards, sitting opposite him, and kisses him. It’s softer than before, almost tender and exploratory. As she does this her hands settle on his broad shoulders then begin to move slowly down his body. She carefully maps every inch of him, inspecting every scar with the tips of her fingers, familiarising herself with him.

Her fingers tiptoe gently over the hard planes of muscle at this stomach, pausing a moment to groan as he presses his tongue into her mouth. Then she lets her searching touch sink lower and Cassian’s entire body tenses and stills against her in anticipation. When she cautiously reaches between his legs he breaks the kiss letting a gasp burst from his lips, his eyes snapping shut. It takes every bit of self restraint he’s managed to accumulate in five centuries to stop himself pouncing on her then and there.

When she leans forwards, laying her body against hers as her fingers give him a few gentle strokes and whispers, “I want you,” that restraint snaps.

With a low snarl he surges forwards, capturing her mouth in a bruising kiss and she moans faintly into him. Then she parts her lips for his tongue again and he slides a hand through her rich burnt gold hair. Gripping a fistful of it and tugging he makes her moan again.

“Nesta,” he huffs hopelessly between kisses. Her name. The taste of it on his tongue feels so right, so good. He would say nothing but it until the end of his days. He would say it until there was no air left in his lungs. He would say it with his last breath. “Nesta.”

She draws away from him, trailing her fingers softly over his chest. Then she moves up to the top of the bed. He watches her, body shaking with desire. But he lets her lead this, lets her show him what she’s ready for, what she wants.

Slowly, deliberately, her eyes always on his, making sure he understands, she lowers herself down. She submits to him again. Still trusting him. His mouth goes dry at the sight of her spread out before him and the realisation that accompanies it. He had thought she would want to have control, that she would want to take charge of this. And he had been more than willing to go along with her, to do whatever she wanted.

But he understands now. This time, this first time, with him, with them, she wants it to be like this. She wants him to do this for her. She trusts him completely and he knows that this is the way she’s chosen to show him that. She’s willing to surrender everything to him in the darkness that cloaks them. He’s not sure how to tell her what that means to him. He's not sure how to explain that he understands and that he’s honoured after everything she’s been through that she would let him do this. So he chooses to show her instead.

Coming over her, Cassian reaches down and softly strokes her dark golden hair off to either side of her face. Slow. He told her they would take it slow and he finds that, despite the hunger that roars in his blood, he has no desire at all to rush this. He wants to take his sweet time with her, make her feel worshipped, make her feel special, make her feel loved.

He lets his fingers glide slowly over her body, following every perfect curve and contour of her, leaving no inch untouched. She still seems a little uncomfortable being so bare and exposed before him. He kisses away each lingering doubt and insecurity as he presses his lips over every part of her. His fingers still trail steadily lower and lower and he can’t help the groan that comes from him when they dip between her legs again.

Cauldron boil him, she’s already so wet for him, so hot, so- “Ready for me, sweetheart?” he murmurs in her ear.

She actually whimpers at that and Cassian grips the sheets in his hands to try and ground and compose himself. Then she nods, eyes closed and tugs him a little closer. Carefully, he positions himself at her entrance and begins to ease himself inside her. “Mother,” he groans, pausing again to try and find a shred of control.

Her body tenses beneath him and her breathing hitches as she feels him and he hesitates again. He takes her hand gently in his, giving it a little squeeze and anchors her to him. “Do you want to stop?” he asks her softly, gently kissing her forehead. The gesture tells her it's more than alright if she does. 

But Nesta frantically shakes her head and squeezes his hand, letting him know that she’s sure, she wants this, wants him. Cassian still goes slow as he lets himself enter her, inch by inch. By the Mother she feels incredible. But his focus remains on her face the whole time. He never takes his eyes from her, making sure she’s happy, ready to stop at the first sign of discomfort or uncertainty from her.

He sees nothing but bliss and wonder on that beautiful face as they’re joined. He can’t help himself as he leans down to kiss her and she responds with that same burning hunger that he always sees blazing through her body. Once he’s fully sheathed inside her he gently rolls his hips, letting her adjust to him. Reaching up she wraps her legs around his waist, tugging him closer, deeper. Cassian gasps at the feel, at her desperation and buries his lips at her neck. He lets his lips kiss and suck there until she whimpers and the sound shudders through him.

When he manages to look up again she’s nodding her head to him, her eyes open and bright as they find his. Lifting her hips against his she slowly coaxes him to move within her and he follows her lead. Pulling out of her he then eases back in, pleasure thrumming through him. But he still keeps his eyes on her as he repeats the motion. Her head is thrown back against her pillows, her hair fanning at around her like a pool of molten gold. Her hands grapple at the sheets beneath her and she again lifts herself to meet his next thrust.

“Talk to me, Nesta,” he growls, the words rumbling deep in his chest. Leaning down he kisses her as he settles them into a slow, gentle rhythm to give her body time to learn it. “Tell me how it feels,” he coaxes her quietly. He wants to hear her voice, wants it to wrap around him and envelope him. And he wants to know what she likes, what he should do for her, how to make her feel-

“Good,” she manages to choke out to him, frantically nodding her head again. Her fingers squeeze at the sheets she’s fisting in her hands as he pushes in a little deeper this time and she gasps. “Good, good, good,” she manages in a hoarse whine. Then she whispers, “More, Cassian.”

Kissing her deeply he increases his pace, making his movements a little harder at the same time. In answer she throws back her head, eyes clamping shut as she trembles at the pleasure pulsing through her. Her hands unclench from the sheets and cover her mouth to try and stifle the sounds coming from her.

“No, no,” he pants urgently, struggling to keep his breathing even as he moves inside her. She feels better than he could ever have dreamed and he can’t, Cauldron he can’t. Taking her hand he twines their fingers together and leans down to her. “I want to hear you,” he groans in her ear, stroking back her hair and sucking gently on her earlobe to make her shudder. “Let me hear you moan for me, Nesta.”

He eases his fingers between her legs again as he speaks, coaxing the sensitive bundle of nerves at the apex of her thighs. She moans for him then, unable to help herself. He watches her tip back her head, her chest heaving, her hips bucking up against his. As he does so Cassian thinks she might be the most beautiful, wondrous thing he’s ever seen in all this time in this world.

“That’s you,” he gasps to her, pleasure flaring in him with each thrust, quickly building to obliterate him. “That’s you- _Nesta_.”

That bond that’s been between them for weeks now burns as he moves within her. It blazes with light and fire and the eternity he feels erupting around them. The promises contained within that connection tug at him. It feels as though he’s binding her to him with each thrust, each movement that builds them up and up and up and up.

“Cassian,” she whimpers, eyes closed, shaking beneath him. Her hands reach up and wrap around his neck, clinging to him, pulling him closer- still mindful of his damaged wings. Something that feels to him like the love that might one day blossom between them whispers between them at that tenderness from her. 

He buries his lips at her neck, kissing again and again as she quivers. “Cassian, Cassian, please,” she cries, pulling him harder against her.

“I’m here,” he growls. Kissing softly and slowly at her neck he draws another moan from her and it crashes through him, echoing within his body and sending pleasure sparking through him.  “I’m here, I’m here, I’ve got you.”

“Cass-“ she pants, rocking her ups against him, urging him deeper and faster and harder. “Cass- More. Please. Please. More.”

It’s then that he breaks and stops holding back. With a rough snarl he lets himself go, giving himself entirely to her even as she gives herself over utterly to him. They become one, bound together in that moonlit darkness. They move together and come undone together. He can’t tell where he ends and she begins – or if they ever end or begin at all.

His body catches fire as he moves within her. Some spark buried deep in her soul bursts to life and takes him with it. He doesn’t care if it consumes him. He doesn’t care if there will be nothing left of them but ashes by the time it’s done. It’s worth it. She is worth it. His hurricane. His Nesta. His-

She splinters around him, her body shattering to a sudden halt and her nails drag down his spine as she arches her hips against him. The cry that tears from her echoes through his soul and drags him over the edge with her with a roar. She whimpers again at the feel of him finishing inside her and clings tighter, her nails digging deep into his back but it’s a sweet pain. He leans down to kiss her softly again, swallowing her moans and stroking back her hair as they both attempt to come down.

Panting, he eases himself down beside her, wrapping an arm around her and tucking her in tight against him. She nuzzles affectionately into his chest, breathing hard, the hot puffs of air murmuring against his skin. Clearly struggling to compose herself, Cassian feels her entire body shaking. Gently, he strokes his fingers up and down her spine in lazy, spiralling motions to calm and quiet her.

Lightly kissing her temple he manages to get out between ragged breaths, “You good?” She just nods, settling herself ostentatiously against him. He huffs a soft laugh into her hair and gently kisses her head again.

 Noticing her slight shiver he realises it has more to do with her nakedness than the pleasure still rattling through her. At once, Cassian leans forwards and drags a blanket up over them to keep the chill off. He wishes he could surround her with his wings and cocoon them together within them but... Nesta, seems to sense the sudden stab of bitterness that had overtaken him for a heartbeat. She leans in and tenderly brushes her lips against his, pressing in even closer for comfort.

*****

Nesta lightly traces the tattoos that sprawl over Cassian’s chest and shoulders. Following the intricate pattern of each design she gazes at the dark ink swirling like thunderclouds just beneath his skin. She can't help but be transfixed by them. She finds them beautiful, she realises. Strange and foreign and unlike anything she’s ever seen perhaps but...Beautiful.

As her fingers wander over the markings she’s dimly aware of his hand trailing through her hair, absently stroking it. His eyes are closed and his face is serene. He looks to be truly at peace with the world for the first time since leaving Hybern. And she realises as she lies there curled up beside him that this feels...good. This feels normal.

She could never have expected such a vulnerable kind of intimacy with another person to be so natural. But with him...With him...

As she reaches the curved tip of one of the tattoos she swallows and looks up to find him watching her with veiled eyes. “What do they mean?” she asks him softly.

He’s quiet for a moment, taking the hand that had been tracing his tattoos and placing it flat against his chest, right over his heart, before covering it with his own. The gesture is so thoughtless, so unconscious that she smiles faintly at it. His fingers twine idly with hers and she stays silent, giving him time. His eyes are glazed and have an odd, faraway look that she lets stand, wondering what memories her question stirred.

His heart pounds beneath her touch, hard and steady. She thinks vaguely that it’s a sound she could get used to. It's a sound that could coax her into sleep with its soothing rhythm. It's a sound that she could perhaps, in time, learn to love.

Finally, Cassian says, “Every Illyrian warrior receives them on the day they are initiated. The designs vary from person to person, each one is unique in that way but their purpose is the same.” He looks down at her again and his voice drops, soft and intimate, as though every word, every breath, is just for her.

“They’re a blessing for luck and glory on the battlefield.” She stiffens slightly at that, a faint hiss passing her lips. The thought of him in battle, bloody and broken....She still remembers his scream ripping through her as his wings had shredded under that blast of power. The idea of him enduring that again...She nestles in a little closer to him, eliminating all space between their bodies, feeling oddly possessive and protective over him.

“You’re going to end up in battle again before this is over, aren’t you?” she murmurs hoarsely. She’s still unable to stop following the curves and lines of his tattoos, thinking now that they’re entirely unsatisfactory for keeping him safe. She needs so much more assurance than these can give her.

“I am Rhys’ army commander,” he rumbles to her, fingers resuming the soft stroking of her hair. “I’d be a very poor one if I never fought with my warriors. And with this war coming...I must fight again.”

The pride that had flickered in his words at the mention of his title has faded by the end, leaving nothing but heavy, weary sadness in him. He’s already seen war, she reminds herself. He’s already fought in it and found little glory in all the carnage and slaughter. He’s already been traumatised by the things he’s endured and the things he was forced to do. He has no wish to go through it again and she has no wish to watch him. She wonders if this time whatever luck those tattoos might have gifted him will run out. She shudders at the mere thought.

“Just don’t die,” she whispers, the words more to herself than to him. Almost a prayer. They might have been a prayer in truth, if she’d had anything to pray to. “Don’t die,” she says again onto his chests, closing her eyes. And this time it’s not a prayer but a command.

He presses his lips to the top of her head, “I promise I’ll try,” he murmurs, his voice unusually grave and sincere, knowing her need.

“Trying isn’t good enough,” she snaps back. Not when failure will result in his death.

“It’s all I can do, all I can promise you,” he breathes back. Always blunt. Always honest. Things she’s valued in him at other times but now...A part of her wants him to lie to her, to tell her it will be all right, that he will be all right. But he will never lie to her. Will never make a promise to her he can’t keep. And she loves that more than the hollow words and empty comfort they might have brought for a night.

She kisses him, hard and intense and claiming, feeling that connection between them thrum in answer.

“If you die on me,” she mumbles into his skin, “I swear I’ll never rest until I’ve hounded your spirit through every dark hell there is and made you suffer for it.”

He chuckles making her body lift up and down as his chest rises and falls with it. “I believe you,” he says, eyes twinkling, clearly trying to lighten the mood.

 But she keeps her face buried against him, the breath shuddering out of her. To lose him...To lose this, this understanding, this acceptance, one she’s only ever felt with him. This feeling of finally having some place in the world, of having someone she fits with...To lose that...

“Hey.” Cassian lightly takes her chin between his thumb and forefinger, titling her head up. “It will be all right,” he says gently.

“Of course it will,” she snaps defiantly, lying against him as though that settles things.

Even if she lived to see the death of this world and the birth of another, Nesta knows she still wouldn’t have time to find the words to express her gratitude to him for saying no more on the subject but pressing a soft, reassuring kiss to her forehead all the same. She thinks he understands it though, thanks to...

“This...Bond between us,” she says slowly, head now resting on his shoulder. He stiffens but she goes on, trying to keep her voice level and measured though it still shakes with every word. “It’s more than just the promise you made me, isn’t it?”

He hesitates and for a moment she expects him to deny or suggest alternative explanations than the one that whispers the truth deep in her soul. Like a cry carried on a gust of wind, faint but unmistakable and impossible to ignore.

But he only says, “Yes.” The bond sparks in answer. He looks down at her then adds softly, “But it doesn’t have to be.  Not if you don’t want it to.”

A sharp blend of terror and exhilaration spikes through her at the thought of it and she clings to him still more tightly, anchoring herself to his strong, solid presence. “I don’t know what I want,” she whispers, the words sounding small and childlike in her ears.

A part of her wants him, wants this, wants to throw herself off this waiting cliff edge and trust herself to him. The other part is terrified of this connection now. The thought of binding herself to him, forging their souls together as they long for only to have him ripped away from her by this war is more than she can stand, more than she could endure.

The hurricane of doubt and overwhelming emotion rages within her, battling back and forth across her soul until Cassian gentles it with a soft touch. Another gentle kiss to her brow calms the raging storm in her.

“We don’t have decide anything right now,” he says evenly, “We have a while to sort it all out.”

For the first time that looming eternity spread out before her doesn’t feel like a gaping, numb abyss. And she hopes whatever fates there are that play with their lives like men tossing dice, they let her keep him throughout her immortality.

She has a vague awareness of Cassian gently hushing her and soothing her as he draws her in close. He wraps his arms around her and draws her in and she knows the pang that she feels down the bond is for the wish that it was his wings that enveloped them. She gives his hand a gentle squeeze as he tucks her in close.

A sense of calm filters quietly through her body and the relief of it nearly shatters her. She has no idea how he manages to gentle the inferno that’s raged within her since the day she was born but...It’s just another thing that would make it so, so impossibly easy to fall in love with him.

Cassian strokes her hair, soothing her in the warm darkness of their entwined bodies and after a while he falls asleep with her still cradled in his arms. Nesta doesn’t follow suit for hours afterwards. But within his embrace, listening to the steady rhythm of his breathing she finds a sense of peace and comfort and safety that she’s never really known.

And she thinks vaguely to herself, just before she too drifts off to join him in dreams, that this must be what home is supposed to feel like.

  
                                                        *****

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading all of this! I would really, really love feedback on this one, it's been a struggle to get it out.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Feedback will always make my day if you have a moment!


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